But naturally they didn’t have this age limit listed on their door. When I was young the only places which had age limits were taverns. Stores were quite willing to take the money of younger buyers.
Anyone else think this is crazy?
Maybe not. Some parents these days treat stores as a free playground. I can see the store having had too many kids trashing the place and just getting sick of it.
On the other hand, the hobby store I go to has a sign, “Children left unattended must have a large allowance,” and in this case, the kid did!
Not at all. The policy isn’t aimed at young children. It’s aimed at parents who drop their young children off in a store and leave them there while they go do their shopping. Stores should not have to and are not able to provide free daycare services.
I think if they have the policy then they should post it in a visible area. I also think that they would benefit from using the policy to clamp down on the misbehaving kids and let the quiet ones browse (especially those so close to the cutoff age).
Let me ask you something: my family owns a game store and we have Magic tournaments often. There is a family that leaves their 8 year old to play for 3+ hours. He is well-behaved but I’m wondering what our liability is in this case? The other day he got sick in the store and we had to look up his parents phone number to come get him. Am I overreacting by feeling like this is a bad idea?
Except if they left it up to the floor manager’s discretion the store would be bombarded with complaints along the line of “Misbehaving!? My Little Etrigan!? Well, I never heard such nonsense! I shall never shop here again and I shall advise others likewise.” Better to have a one size fits all policy, but it should be clearly posted.
What makes this case for me is the fact that the policy wasn’t posted. If it were, well, it’s a sensible policy to have, for a number of reasons, and you want to enforce it uniformly. But without the policy being posted, the kid (or his parents) wasn’t doing anything wrong, and the store’s actions amount to kidnapping.
The other thing is, why was the kid detained instead of just being asked to leave?
Imagine the liabiltiy they could face for putting, or letting, the un-watched child out of the store and something happened to it.
By ‘detaining’ the child, they were, in fact, protecting the child since they did not know where the parents were.
These days - there is no winning - everyone lives in fear of litigation - except the lawyers and the media.
That’s not kidnapping. They apparently contacted the parents as quickly as possible to get the parents to pick the kid up. That’s not how kidnapping works.
I do think the manager and security guy were guilty of being colossal pricks to the dad, IF the dad is to be believed. (Here’s the story I’m finding). Their policy is fine, their business, and they’re under no obligation to post it, and asking the kid to hang out with security while they call dad is fine–but impugning the dad’s parenting is superprickish.
Yeah, a posted policy would be nice, but
It says in this story that the kid was in the store for an hour before he was stopped, and had biked to the mall after the father said he would meet him there "in a few hours for lunch.”
So in fact, the father DID use the store as a free babysitter.
As for keeping the kid there, can you imagine the grief the store manager would have gotten for telling an unaccompanied 11-year old to go walk around the mall?
I have the feeling that if the kid had walked in, browsed for 10 minutes, and then bought something, no one would have made an issue out of it.
ETA: Notice the different spins between the stories Left Hand of Dorkness and I found.
No. The kid had spent thousands of dollars on his Lego collection.
I remember when I was that age, my dad would drop me off at Putt Putt Golf (at my request), buy me an all day pass, and leave me there until he got off work.
And nobody there gave two fucks. Ya’ know why? Because they had a kid there with a pocket full of cash, all too eager to spend it on hot dogs, soda and video games.
“Free daycare” my ass, the manager of that Lego store is an idiot. And another idiot award goes to the dad for letting his son walk around with $200 cash. :smack:
Were they going to have lunch in the store? Is it the kind of place where people usually hang out for an hour? If so, they should have left he kid alone, but if not, I understand why they questioned him and had his father come get him.
My 11-year-old walks to the game store, plays and shops for a while, and walks home. No one bothers her. If she got really sick at the store, she would go to an employee and give them our phone number to call me. (If she were only a little sick, I think she’d just walk home.) I’m pretty sure she knew our phone numbers at 8 - our 6-year-old knows them, too. So the only part of this story that makes me a little :dubious: is the having to look up his parents’ phone number.
Kids are people too, and many are very capable people.
Pretty baffled by this too. I remember getting dropped off at the toy/book/record store at that age, and shopping for an hour, and it was a complete non-event. It was probably more typical to be dropped off than to have your parents come inside with you and follow you around. I mean, you weren’t allowed to go in with a bunch of friends and cause trouble, and some places might have “max 2 students” rules for just that reason, but browsing by yourself with allowance money to spend was no problem.
“Using the store as a babysitter” implies the dad did this in lieu of paying someone to come to the house to watch the kid. I’m willing to bet that in this family, the 11.5 year old boy is left home alone to play video games on a regular basis, no sitter needed.
The whole incident seems to overlook the fact that the kid was a regular customer at the store, and must have been known to some or most of the staff. Maybe the the staffer that day didn’t know him? Anyway, really dickish way to treat a regular customer.
On the other hand, they may have decided it was getting into “liability” area…
"surely you knew the boy was spending vast amounts of cash there on a regular basis , and you supported it by leaving him browse for hours on end ? You know he has spent his college trust fund money, who’s going to pay for tuition now ? You ? ".
Perhaps there should have been a sign, but no store has any obligation to be a babysitter.
When I worked at the Science Center, we had this problem all the time – you had to be at least 13 to be there on your own – anyone younger than that was required to have someone 16 or older with them. Parents would drop their kids off and then get pissed off when we’d call them up and tell them they’d either have to come and stay with their kids, or take them home. (We’d get the, “well, I give him permission to stay, is that all right?” Sorry, no.)
I remember on one occassion, a teenage girl dropped her younger siblings off (the oldest couldn’t have been more than 10), and then got really mad when they called her to come back. She came marching in and said, “Well, I’m here now and I give them permission to stay!” When we told her she had to stay with them, she freaked out and marched them right out of there.
It has nothing to do with child abductions. If ANYTHING happens – kid gets hurt, for example (that does happen), the store or museum or wherever could be liable. The parents can then try and claim that they should’ve been watching them. Yes, it sounds stupid, but people try it. And besides, we had a lot of kids who definitely were NOT well-behaved and acted like litle shits. And trust me, their parents always swore up and down, “well, MY kid NEVER misbehaves or causes any trouble!” Blame it on asshole parents with bratty kids and people who sue at the drop of a hat if anything happens to their precious little baby.
What the heck are you talking about?
The kid biked three miles to the Lego store. Does that sound like someone who needs a babysitter?
Jeeze. I’m just thinking of all the authorized, unaccompanied by an adult, trips I took before I was 11½ years old. Like going too and from Hebrew school on weekdays, Sunday school, walking with friends to the playground or to a movie matinee.
I like the sign in the stores that read “Unaccompanied children will be given free puppies”